Transportation through time.

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Monthly Archives: August 2016

City Lab recently published an article on the 1950’s video Let’s go to town. This PR video was produced for General Motors in order to promote its buses. GM was in an interesting position for many decades as being not only a dominant manufacturer of automobiles but also city buses. While GM sold off its bus…

There’s a new autobiography of Alan S. Boyd, the first U.S. Secretary of Transportation: “A Great Honor: My Life Shaping 20th Century Transportation.” For information about how to purchase the book, as well as Jeff Davis’s review click here. ~ Thanks to Asha W. Agrawal for this post

A lower deck? Rapid Transit using the Golden Gate Bridge? There have been plans, off and on, for one or both over the years. View these plans and construction on this slideshow and discussion from the San Francisco Chronicle. Also, as an added bonus. Check out this 1965 BART Ad ~Thanks to Susan Handy for this…

Check out The Motley Fool discussion of the technological challenges William Lear and Elmer Wavering overcame to develop the first car radio. The young inventors had to overcome numerous sources of interference among other things. Inventing the car radio began two exceptional careers – aviation fans might recognize the name Lear. ~Thanks to Steven Polunsky for this post

An article in the Atlantic: “A Century of Highway Zombies. Since the 1920s, “highway hypnosis” has lulled drivers to disaster. An Object Lesson” From an New York Herald report in 1921: “a self-induced yet uninvited malady,” which takes hold on “a long stretch of road” paradoxically among the most skilled chauffeurs, for whom driving had become…

In an article on “Why highways have become the center of civil rights protest,” the author reflects on the role of transportation in past and present civil rights protests. “If anything is new, what’s different today may be the occupation of urban interstates for the purpose of bringing them to a standstill. Protesters in Selma…